1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium cassette, and to a recording and/or reproducing apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to a recording medium cassette capable of being optionally provided with additional identifiers and of being easily miniaturized if necessary, and having satisfactory appearance, and to a recording and/or reproducing apparatus suitable for using the same recording medium cassette.
2. Description of the Related Art
The related-art recording medium cassette, such as a tape cassette a shown in FIG. 20 for use on an 8 mm video tape recorder (hereinafter abbreviated to "VTR"), is provided with recognition holes indicating pieces of information about the magnetic tape including the type of the magnetic tape and the thickness of the magnetic tape.
As shown in FIG. 20, the tape cassette a is provided with recognition holes c in the bottom wall b thereof in the opposite rear corners. These recognition holes c are allocated to pieces of information including the type of the magnetic tape and the thickness of the magnetic tape.
When the tape cassette a is inserted in a VTR, the detecting pins of switches are inserted in the recognition holes c, respectively, to read the pieces information on the basis of the respective depths of insertion of the detecting pins in the recognition holes c. In FIG. 20, indicated at d are positioning holes.
In this related-art tape cassette a, the recognition holes c are either open or closed to indicate pieces of information. Accordingly, the recognition holes c need to be formed in portions of the bottom wall b of the tape cassette a having a thickness large enough to form the recognition holes c. Consequently, the recognition holes c can be formed only in limited areas of the surface of the bottom wall b and the restriction holes c diminishes the area of the surface of the bottom wall b available for other uses.
Furthermore, if the recognition holes need to be formed in the opposite corners of the rear side of the bottom wall, the positions of the recognition holes of a small-sized tape cassette on the VTR and those of the corresponding recognition holes of a large-sized tape cassette on the same VTR are different from each other.
Accordingly, a VTR which is designed to use both the small-sized tape cassette and the large-sized tape cassette must be provided with two sets of switches, namely, one set of switches for the recognition holes of the small-sized tape cassette and another set of switches for the recognition holes of the large-sized tape cassette, or one set of switches which can be shifted according to the size of the tape cassette. Such an arrangement of the switches makes the construction of the VTR complex.
Since each recognition hole is allocated to a single piece of information, the number of recognition holes increases with the increase of the number of pieces of information, increasing area and volume necessary for forming the recognition holes, which makes the miniaturization of the tape cassette difficult.
Further, since the recognition holes c are identified by physical items such as position and depth thereof, identifiers which are not taken into consideration when prescribing a format cannot be added.
Furthermore, a large number of recognition holes spoils the appearance of the bottom surface of the tape cassette.
Recording medium cassettes provided with an IC chip for storing information about the recording medium cassettes have been proposed, for example, in:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,644 Jul. 6, 1982 (Theophiel C. J. L. Starr) PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,383,285 May 10, 1983 (Theophiel C. J. L. Starr) PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,684 Jan. 17, 1984 (Claude Sechet et al.) PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,875 Jul. 13, 1989 (Zenkichi Kuriyama et al.)
Although these previously proposed recording medium cassettes facilitate storing information about the recording medium cassettes, the IC chip increases the cost of the recording medium cassettes.